For the first time in nearly five years, Atlanta United has won three straight matches in MLS play.
Behind first-half goals from Tomas Jácob — his second in as many matches — and Fafa Picualt, Atlanta defeated visiting Sporting Kansas City 2-1 on Sunday night for its third consecutive victory. It’s Atlanta’s first three-match regular-season win since September 10-17, 2021.
With new signing Breel Embolo looking on after his $18M transfer was officially announced earlier in the day, Atlanta United took the lead in the 13th minute. Cooper Sanchez played a ball up to Miguel Almiron, who ventured into the box and skillfully avoided SKC defender Moises Mosquera. He then crossed it to Tomas Jácob, who blasted it in at the far post to make it 1-0. Almiron’s assist made him the club’s all-time leader with 42.
In the 24th minute, Atlanta doubled its advantage to 2-0 on a set-piece routine. Almiron’s corner grazed off the head of Elías Báez and was somehow deflected in off the foot of Fafa Picault.
SKC, entering the night with an MLS-worst 19 goals and with Dejan Joveljić out of the lineup ahead of a reported $6M move to the Seattle Sounders, struggled to challenge Atlanta’s defense until Stephen Afrifa made it 2-1 in the 70th minute after Atlanta couldn’t clear the ball out of its own box.
But Atlanta ultimately saw it out to extend its winning run. The win puts it just three points out of the ninth and final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference, level on points with the Philadelphia Union and CF Montréal but ahead on tiebreak. Atlanta also finished with two goals for the fourth straight match and for the fifth time in its last six outings.
Atlanta returns to the pitch on Saturday for a derby against Charlotte FC, a 7:30 p.m. ET kickoff at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
An enjoyable energetic first half, followed by a plodding, energy draining low block second half. It would have nice to win this match 5-0 with Embolo watching on, yet we were outmatched by a bunch of midtier MLSers.
Just don’t understand why Santos is not put in at the 80 mark to provide some kind of threat beyond our exhausted frontline. I appreciate the minutes our youth players get but they are absolutely manhandled by every team. Hoping Amaro can help shore that up 6 spot. But we need a holding 8 soooo badly. Alexi needs to move on. And can our wing backs actually stop ANYBODY from beating them 1v1??
A win is a win but i’m still seeing some glaring mistakes happening that should be easily fixed.
Before the game on the broadcast the commentators were calling out what Miggy’s change has needed to be and apparently he and Tata have been working on it. He’s not going to be driving the ball but creating chances…that’s been very clear as of late. Now they need to work on Miranchuk because while he’s not been bad, still feel like he could step up a bit more.
Fafa…if you think about his work rate to salary ratio, it’s off the charts. You saw this with Dom Dwyer years ago too. I’m honestly surprised we haven’t found some wingers and RB’s that can fit that mold as well, cheap-ish but MLS savvy players who know the position.
Still, I’ll take a win however we can get it. That Philly game should have been a win as well but those glaring mistakes reared their heads and quick. Fix those, get the new striker in, work as a team, hopefully we’ll be dangerous but I remain cautiously optimistic.
Fafa Picault *is* a winger.
Yeah, I know…and he’s likely fitting what I called out. I’m more talking about additional wingers to help there.
Win is a win, but Atlanta is definitely still playing only 45 min. They definitely need to play a full 90 min.
3 games, 3 wins, can’t complain.
But we beat 3 bad teams, and none were very dominant. Still way better than we’ve been at times, but I’m not convinced we’ve turned the page just yet.
If Embolo is a good signing, maybe there is hope. But I really hope we find an elite transitional midfielder either from someone already here stepping up or another signing.
Definitely a tale of two halves, and really even into the 2nd half around 55th or so minute we were controlling the game. Even though SKC isn’t good, I won’t get too down on things kind of seeming to revert to the old form. We had 3 games in a week basically, and had a mid-week travel day. I think there were a lot of starters on tired legs. And SKC is down some key guys/roster slots, so not a total excuse, but without much at striker, we’ve asked a ton of Fafa and he’s mostly been up to the task. It also just left us without our best attacking sub to call on to help kill games (they even touched on that in the broadcast). I think Tata did what he could to bring on the quality subs we have, who are almost all defensive minded.
Positives over this run. The obvious is Miggy’s change in approach. He’s looking more like his old self. He’s never going to have that elite first step again, but he’s still got more than enough pace to be effective and beat guys. The real change is that he’s not trying to do too much every time he’s on the ball. He’s playing faster, more direct, and getting into the attack quicker. Fafa deserves a ton of credit. He’s doing a lot of dirty work, and doing it well. He’s making runs, he’s finding space to work around the DPs, and he’s just been a great team player in a role that maybe isn’t his preferred spot, but one he’s filled in quite well. It’ll be nice to have Embolo in the starting lineup and then we can use Fafa off the bench. We could’ve used him last night as a sub when we were so lacking in attacking options (especially after Brennan picked up a knock and had to come off). Gill has seemingly helped transform how our central midfield can play. He’s fearless and tough, and also provides some real quality play at times. I think this has allowed Muyumba the freedom to get more forward, which I think we all agree is a better use of him. Muyumba is maybe the player I’m most hot and cold on. When he’s doing good things, he’s great, but when he makes errors they tend to be real WTF moments. Jacob also deserves some credit, I think he was probably the one at most fault for SKC’s goal (I haven’t rewatched it since last night), but he seems to be doing a lot of the stuff Tata wants/needs out of his RB in the attack and is generally tough and good when we need to track back. He’s also been moved around, seeing time at CDM and CB, so hopefully he can settle in more at RB now that CB and CDM seem to be stabilized.
I’m not sure we’re going to make any waves or anything, and we’ve not been truly dominant in these wins, but 3 wins in a row and in one week seemed like a pipe dream heading into this stretch. So I’ll take it, and be happy about the positives. I’m not totally in on the Embolo signing, as I am worried about his extensive injury history. That said, he does look like he can slot in and be the player we need up top, and he’s been relatively healthy since being fully back from that ACL injury a few years ago. Hopefully, we’re at least on the rise from our bottoming out phase.